What truly strikes me, though, are the incredible strides the Gabelli School has made from our first published magazine to today.

We are now graduating doctoral candidates who are poised to become the next generation of leaders in business research and education. Our undergraduate core curriculum, in its pilot stages a decade ago, has since become a model for business schools around the country. We brought new life to two campus buildings in two boroughs and launched a Bachelor of Science program in Manhattan, providing undergraduates from around the world with a globally oriented, values-based business education. And, as you know, our school turned 100. There is no better indicator of Fordham’s legacy and longevity in business education than our centennial.

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Professors Weigh In on the “Comedy and Tragedy” of the

Eight days later, the Gabelli School of Business’s Sris Chatterjee, Ph.D., James Kelly, Kevin Mirabile, D.P.S., and Steven Raymar, Ph.D., came together in an hour-long webinar to try to make sense of it all.

“GameStop: Comedy? Tragedy? Or Both?” delved deep into the vagaries of the stock market that led to the GameStop saga, from call options to delta hedging and gamma squeezes. There was also a discussion about whether the meteoric rise of GameStop’s stock price, which was driven by members of the Reddit forum r/wallstreetbets, was a one-off event or the start of a trend of market disruption.

Chatterjee warned that one takeaway from the event is that Americans are genuinely disappointed with the status quo.

“We all need an orderly capital market,” he said, “but unless we’re able to convince everybody that this is to everybody’s benefit, we’re going to see more acts of ‘rebellion.'”

After surveying students and faculty about the challenges they encountered as they pivoted to remote learning because of the pandemic, Jeffrey Haynes, director of information technology at the Gabelli School, wrote the grant proposal that was approved last summer.

The O’Shea Center for Credit Analysis and Investment was created thanks to two generous contributions totaling $2 million from Robert O’Shea, BS ’87, and Michele O’Shea, FCRH ’88, as well as Michael Gatto, an adjunct professor at the Gabelli School.

With their gift, the O’Sheas have directed $1 million toward the center. They also donated an additional $250,000 to be split evenly between the Fordham Founder’s Undergraduate Scholarship Fund and the Gabelli School of Business Centennial Fund, which supports faculty and student research as well as curriculum development.

Like millions across the nation, thousands of Bronx businesses have been fighting to stay afloat since the COVID-19 pandemic crippled the world. But as Albert Einstein once said, “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”

In the past, executives could work their way up in one company by specializing in accounting, for instance. Now, however, given technological developments, including the internet, “companies are more complex, and they deal with a lot of different areas,” Lee said. “If you only know one thing, it doesn’t really apply to other areas.”

Business students are noticing the change too. “A lot of accounting students want to get into accounting firms in the consulting area,” Lee noted, “because you can learn different areas.” Volunteering for opportunities that give exposure to multiple divisions is becoming more popular.

In an October Centennial Virtual Speaker Series lecture, Shennette Garrett-Scott, Ph.D., award-winning author, historian, and professor at the University of Mississippi, discussed her book, Banking on Freedom: Black Women in U.S. Finance Before the New Deal.

These are excerpts from her presentation, introduced by Gabelli School Dean Rapaccioli, Ph.D, and David Cowen, Ph.D., president and CEO of the Museum of American Finance, about how Black women recognized the power of investment to create opportunities for employment and housing and to shape the broader meaning of wealth, risk, and opportunity.

“My entire intellectual journey has been about the application of scientific knowledge to commercial enterprise so that it may have an impact on people,” he said, “hopefully a good and positive impact—not by creating weapons of mass destruction.”